Cisco-Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Router
by Linksys
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Our Price: $72.97 Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours Buy Used: from $22.00 (click here) Category: CE See more product details |
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Customers in the UK,
Buy this product at amazon.co.uk
for British Pounds
Digital Cameras Photo Reviews of Cisco-Linksys WRT54G Wireless-G Router
Customer Review: A consumer level product.
Summary: 3 Stars
Here is the big news to everyone; this is a consumer level product. This is not an enterprise piece of hardware that you will find in an office or corporate environment. You will not be able to run 100's users using WPA and WPA2 encryption through this thing, just a handful of people on a cable modem or DSL line. People that complain about this product not standing up to hardcore use are fooling themselves. They need to step up and buy an enterprise level piece of hardware for a lot more money.
That aside, this is not that bad of a product. I have had mine for about a year and use a third party firmware on mine and love it. With a little knowledge and tweaking, you can get this product to run encrypted wireless connections to about 10 people with little or no problem. If you have users that use P2P, you will need to tweak this and all wireless routers. P2P is just harsh on networking equipment of all kinds.
On the subject of Third Party firmware; Linksys WRT54G versions 1 through 4 run Linux. Because of that, a bunch of really smart people sat down and figured out how to make the Linksys WRT54G run their own custom firmware. So, if you type in "Linksys firmware" into Google or A9, you will get a list of websites that have custom firmware for various kinds of Linksys Routers (Linksys makes a few routers that run Linux). The really neat thing about this is that the third party firmware are very powerful and add many more features to the WRT54G that are not there, but should be. However, the version of the WRT54G that Amazon.com and most other places sell is version 5. The new hardware version does not run Linux at all and most likely will not since the memory has been cut in half. Simply put, the hardware is just too small to run Linux, which is a really bummer since I found it fun to play with my Linksys WRT54G's firmware.
However, if you are not a tech person and just want a wireless router for home or your very small business, you can just get a WRT54G from here and configure it. Just make sure to get someone to help you configure the encryption if you can not do it yourself. Do not use this thing without Wireless Encryption. All wireless routers need to be configured to use Wireless Encryption, so this is just not a problem with the WRT54G.
If you are a tech person and want to really play with your WRT54G, sorry, but you need to get the WRT54GS router. They have the large amounts of RAM and still run Linux. I would highly recommend that you do this if you want to learn something, but if you are not interested in learning this stuff and just want a working wireless router, just get the WRT54G.
Customer Review: DESCRIBED IN ONE WORD: AWESOME!
Summary: 5 Stars
I received my Linksys WRT54G Wireless 54g Router and Linksys WPC54G Wireless 54g PC Card and I all I can say is WOW! After an upgrade to 802.11B several months ago (BELKIN wireless router and card) I was very happy with the wireless world in the home/home office environment. However, after receiving my LINKSYS 802.11G setup (thanks Amazon for superfast shipping!) of both their .11g router and PC card I can say that it is worth the upgrade to the new standard!
While I was able do everything I need to do (Internet, Network printing, and file access, Games, etc) with little delay on my network with the 11B, The linksys is a noticeable improvement. That slight hesitation with .11B I often encountered is now a distant memory. Range and signal is far superior to what I had before. In a 2 story townhouse with God knows how many old coats of lead paint and numerous potential interference issues, I have yet to not maintain a connection signal of 54. After a walk around my yard and surrounding area with my laptop, I suffered no serious drop of signal until hitting the far edge of the router's range
As always with Linksys, setup is quick and painless. Within 5 minutes of opening the box, I was plugged in, rebooted and surfing the web. In a worst case scenario, Linksys has always given me super tech support for any questions or minor issues I have run into in the past (I have owned several Linksys Wire Routers) so I have no fears if something pops up in the future. Backwards compatability with 11B cards helps ease the pain of those folks out there hesitant to leave behind a high dollar investment in their old cards to upgrade to this router. I have a Belkin .11B card that is performing with no problems (albeit at the .11B speed) as well as my new Linksys .11G card in another laptop.
Though Linksys may have leapt out of the gate before the 802.11g standard is completely agreed upon, I have no doubts based on what I have heard and read that any changes to the standard will be handled via easy firmware upgrades to the router (how many times have we already had to update firmware on wire and 11B hardware?) with little to no pain.
Bottom line, I am by no means a rocket scientist or computer super genius, but I do know what I like: quick,reliable performance with minimal impact to my wallet or daily schedule. As in the past, Linksys delivers all that and more as is their norm.
In an age where nanoseconds are often the difference between 2 items, this sets the standard bar a notch higher for the rest of the wireless community.
Customer Review: An absolute NIGHTMARE!
Summary: 1 Stars
I am absolutely baffled that this product has so many positive reviews. I purchased this router about 2 years ago for my first apartment and since my mom has the same one, I assumed all the issues I was having were coming from the Motorola Surfboard modem. A friend came by after 2 months of my resetting and rebooting both and finally did some magic that made it more stable. I moved and had no use for it after that but kept it.
Now, I've got my own house and had my cable/DSL set up Saturday about 2. By 2:30, I had the setup wizard frozen and was on the phone with India/Sri Lanka/ Philippines/Bangladesh or some other far off foreign country speaking with tech support. It was a challenge to follow the girl's directions since her accent was so thick I couldn't make out half of them! After she suggested I 'kindly' update my firmware, my set up wizard crashed and I couldn't access half of the router's website anymore! After 45 minutes of phone talk I finally just said it was working fine and it did for about 15 minutes. Then I had to run set up wizard again since when I tried to reset the router, it killed the WPA encryption I had set up and I had to rename the router and recreate the security. Not that bad... until you have to do it every quarter of an hour. LITERALLY!
So this morning after spending another 45 minutes on the phone with the Philippines and having the new girl tell me that my CELL PHONE was the reason it wasn't working, and that I should really not have a cordless phone (including cell phones) in the same house as my router excuse me!!!!!!!!?????!!!!!), I decided that maybe it was time to try a new one.
I now have a Linksys WRT54G paperweight. And a new, wonderfully reliable (so far, no disconnects in 3 hours...) Belkin F5D8233-4 N Wireless Router Belkin F5D8233-4 N Wireless Router that took longer to drive 6 miles roundtrip to buy than to set up. If you are looking for a new router, PLEASE do not buy this Linksys. It seems to be hit or miss. And unless you are GREAT at computer programming and such, you WILL call tech support and tho, to their credit, they will try to help, it's the same useless information that gets you a quick fix. And when I say quick, I mean the fix will last for about 30 minutes TOPS.
Do yourself a favor and buy the Belkin. And no, I don't work for Belkin, and other than my iPod Nano armband, this is my first Belkin product. It will not be my last now.
Customer Review: Terrible experience! Really frustrating.
Summary: 1 Stars
I went through two of these units. I set up the first one and it worked for about a month. It then failed and no amount of tech support would revive it, so I had it replaced under warranty. The second unit worked a while, but soon after the warranty period expired, it started to flake out frequently.
After that, I had a lot of problems with it. The wireless connection dropped often. Tech support could usually get it going again, and eventually I learned some of the tricks they gave me for resuscitating it: ipconfig through the command window, changing the wireless channel, etc.
I had it for well over a year and it flaked out on me often. Even when it worked, its range didn't impress me. I couldn't move one room away from the router and maintain the wireless connection through a single wall at a distance of around 30 feet. Linksys tech support isn't too bad, and they tried to help, but the product is just dismal.
Over time the rate of problems increased. I noticed that any time my laptop detected multiple wireless signals, my wireless connection would fail. I thought this might be a problem with the laptop, but we also have a PDA with wireless capability, and the Linksys wireless connection would drop the PDA at the same times.
Eventually when I tried to update the firmware, my computer crashed, and the router went completely dead. It didn't even work as a physical router after that.
Later a friend gave me a Linksys Compact Wireless-G router that had the very same problem with its wireless signal dropping whenever there were other wireless signals in the area. Changing channels and settings did nothing to help the problem. It only worked when I gave it to my parents, who live in a remote area where no other wireless signals can interfere with the Linksys wireless.
Recently I tried to revive this older WRT54G model again by restoring the factory defaults and then updating the firmware. It still doesn't work. This last problem may not be the fault of Linksys; they do warn that if the computer stops during a firmware update, the router may die.
But the wireless never worked well, and that is the fault of Linksys. I've given Linksys plenty of chances but it has been a disappointment every time. If you live in an apartment building or in a dense neighborhood, avoid Linksys, or prepare to have big problems with your wireless connection as soon as one of your neighbors turns on a wireless device of his own.
Customer Review: Solid router, poor documentation
Summary: 4 Stars
First, let me set the stage by saying that I am not a network specialist, just a regular Joe who for convenience reasons wants a wireless network in his house. For the last couple of years I'd run the Linksys Wireless B router; it was rock solid, no issues whatsoever. However I realized the other day that I hadn't even secured it (yes, stupid me). As I'd just purchased a new computer with a Wireless G adapter, I figured I'd upgrade the router as well and set it up as it's supposed to be.
I first purchased the Wireless G with Speedbooster. Though admittedly I am a novice at networking, I am not an idiot and can read directions. Quite frankly though, I've never seen a worse setup process for a piece of hardware. The documentation was just horrible. When you open the package the first thing you see is "Run CD first". So I run the CD, and get all kinds of quirky error messages. Somehow the adapter finds the router anyway, but it's unsecured. I call tech support, which was clearly overseas, and I'm pretty sure he understood me about as well as I understood him. After 15 minutes on hold and 10 painful minutes with this guy, he basically tells me to download a file from their website which will walk me through. I did this and indeed the setup flowed much better. But my question: How does this CD make it out the door if it's this bad?
Anyway, after learning that the "Speedboost" feature only does anything for you if (1) you are also using a Speedboost adapter (which I was), and (2) if you are transferring large data files between computers (Note: it does NOT increase your speed on the Internet, but only between computers on the network), I opted to return the product and get the standard Wireless G (v.5).
Best decision I've made in a long time. First, the router was on sale for $49 at Circuit City. Second, the setup CD actually worked perfectly. I was able to use the brower-based administrative screen with no problems. I still need to read up on some of the security settings, etc to fully understand all that's up there, but bottom-line is that the installation was like night and day compared to the Speedboost router. The performance of the router itself deserves 5 stars, but the Linksys documentation and support is so poor that I can only give it 4. Even the PDF manual that comes with it is pretty vague for someone not familiar with "MAC settings", etc. If you follow the directions to the letter though then you should be OK on the setup.